What This Was
by roofietoof
Summary: Nobody knew what this was.


Apollo and Starbuck had been frakking each other for several months now.

Kat had never been…….. well, she was trying to find a way to say this without insulting herself. Kat had never been the brightest girl in the Twelve Colonies, but even she knew that.

She wasn't exactly sure how she knew. She wasn't exactly sure how anyone knew. They just did.

Seeing the CAG leaving an empty supply closet looking satisfied and disheveled was funny. Seeing Starbuck emerge two minutes later was frakking hilarious.

They always found a way to be together. Just out of boredom and curiosity one day Kat had gone over the shift schedules, and amazingly, nothing had been tampered with; nothing was blatantly obvious as to how they managed to make that happen. They still worked more shifts than anybody; they still were always where they needed to be.

Not that Kat expected then to shirk duty and responsibility because they were horny. But sometimes she still giggled when she saw the new schedule and there wasn't a blocked off hour that said: _Starbuck and the CAG Alone in a Room with No Clothes_. But then again, Kat didn't expect them to be that obvious either.

Except, yeah, they didn't _actually_ try to hide it. They didn't seem to care if anybody knew. It helped that nobody who knew, cared. Nobody would fault them for this.

The only thing that peaked their curiosity was the fact that nobody knew what _this _was.

Nothing had changed between them. They were still exactly as they were before. Some people took that to mean that they had been frakking before, but Kat didn't think that was the case. She took it to mean something else. Why would anything change when all you did was physically act on what was already emotionally there?

They still fought together, with each other. They still laughed together, at each other. They still came to each other with a problem, went to each other with a solution.

They still found each other when they had a reason to celebrate, when they had a reason to grieve. So, yeah, exactly the same as before.

Outwardly it still could have been construed as totally innocent.

It wasn't so much of a scandal that the CAG was found in Starbuck's bunk when they had the curtain wide open and all they were doing was going over rotation lists. But, yeah, nobody was blind enough to believe that it actually _was_ totally innocent.

Nobody ever said anything. Okay, that wasn't true. Some people said some things, but not outrageous things.

Hotdog, Frosty and she were waiting in the CAG's office in silence one day.

"What do you need him for?" Frosty had asked Kat.

"He needed to talk to me about my landings." She grimaced in response.

"What about you?" He nodded to Hotdog.

"Me? Oh, no. I'm waiting for Starbuck. She needs to sign off on this before I can be let back on rotation." Hotdog answered nervously. "I wonder where they could be."

Frosty snorted in amused disbelief. "You mean Apollo and Starbuck are both unavailable and nobody can find them? Yeah, Hotdog, I wonder _where_ they could be."

And if they were all sitting around playing cards and somebody said, "Sounds like the CAG had an interesting night last night.", nobody gave it a second thought. Nobody would ever _actually _say, "Anybody else hear Starbuck and Apollo going at it in her bunk last night?" If anybody did, they would be met by the icy glares of all the other players. They weren't children, this wasn't grade school.

Starbuck and Apollo had now saved their collective asses more times than they could count. The rest of them owed it to them to not make this juicy gossip.

The only thing that peaked their curiosity was the fact that nobody knew what _this_ was.

Were they just frakking? Was it just release? Was it just exciting to break the frat regs? Not that the frat regs meant anything anymore.

Were they just two old friends that got horny and didn't want to bother with anyone else that they really didn't know all that well?

No one knew. No one knew what _this _was.

And then one day Action Stations were called and they all went out. Max got killed. Starbuck almost did. She blew out an engine and lost primary control to her throttle.

Kat was panicking. Apollo really didn't seem all that worried.

That threw her. She had once been in trouble when she was on CAP with Apollo and he had stayed on the coms with her till she made it back. Walked her through every maneuver, and calmed her down in his soothing, authoritative voice.

This time, all he did was say: "See you back home, Starbuck."

Kat wondered how he could be so cold about someone that he was sleeping with. But then the thought occurred to her that maybe she and Starbuck were different. After all, Starbuck didn't need to be coddled. Starbuck _always_ made it home.

Still, it made her wonder. Made her wonder what _this_ was.

They had all gotten back to the landing bay. Starbuck was the last to get in, thanks to her busted Viper. And Apollo was standing at the bottom of her ladder when she opened her canopy. But that was nothing new; they were always the first ones to greet each other after a battle.

Kat had been called away to look over something and when she came back she saw them.

They were sitting next to each other on the floor of the flight deck. She had her head on his shoulder; his eyes were closed and his hand was entwined with hers as it rested on her knee. They weren't talking. They were just sitting there. On the flight deck. In front of everybody. They were just sitting there.

And then it hit Kat like a thousand ton freight ship:

Oh. _That's_ what this was.

-finis


End file.
